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By the time Sunset Beach Fire Chief Kevin Dempsey and his crew members reach the beach, there is no surf water rescue to conduct, as their nearest station is a mile from the beach.

True, the 25 full- and part-time firefighters who staff the department have ocean rescue training, which might suggest otherwise, but in practice their training is for boating rescues, not near-shore, rip-current-induced incidents.

"I've been here 13 years and I don't think I've been at work and actually made a surf rescue," Dempsey said. "(Victims) are usually out of the water by the time we get there."

Brunswick County beach towns were criticized for inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors to their beaches each summer without providing lifeguard protection after four drownings over the Fourth of July weekend at county beaches.

Although the recent drowning deaths started a conversation about Brunswick County municipalities hiring lifeguards, no town had stepped forward as of this week.

David Hewett, the town manager of Holden Beach, which contracts with Tri Beach Volunteer Fire Department for fire coverage, summed up the ocean rescue abilities of the department, one that is nearly identical to other fire departments with speedboats and open water training.

"Ocean rescue as delivered by Tri Beach Fire is not a viable life saving service ... in the context of providing near-shore life saving services," Hewett said. "It's a round peg in a square hole."

Guarding for life

To understand why Brunswick County beaches do not have lifeguards, one can look across the Cape Fear River to New Hanover County.

Lifeguards have patrolled Kure Beach since the 1950s, Carolina Beach since the '40s and Wrightsville Beach since the '30s, according to the beach towns' respective ocean rescue captains.

"I believe it started in the early '50s, late '40s," Edmund Kennedy, captain of Kure Beach Ocean Rescue, said of the town's lifeguard service. "They had two lifeguards and, from what I understand, one of them was paid by the pier and the other one was paid by the town or the hotel owners."

Today, Kure Beach has 30 lifeguards who patrol the town's three and a half miles of beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day using four-wheelers and nine guard towers, Kennedy said.

"We take a proactive approach to the citizens and the community of Wrightsville beach," said Dave Baker, captain of the Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue. Baker said Brunswick County beach towns take a reactive approach to beach safety.

Steve Foster, manager of Oak Island, and Helen Cashwell, former mayor of Oak Island, both said the former Long Beach section of the island had a few lifeguards in the 1980s, but they do not remember when or why the lifeguards stopped working.

Long Beach and Yaupon Beach combined in 1999 to form Oak Island, which remains North Carolina's most-populated beach town with 6,874 permanent residents.

The swim-at-your-own-risk policy followed by Brunswick County beach towns is not one that Carolina Beach Ocean Rescue Captain Simon Sanders identifies with.

Sanders is in charge of 45 seasonal full- and part-time employees, responsible for Carolina Beach's four and a half miles of beach and protecting 800,000-plus annual tourists.

"The lifeguards come in and think it's a summer job. I just tell them you don't know it but you're going to make a difference to somebody," Sanders said. "They're going to save somebody that wouldn't normally have been there without them."

The cost of lifeguarding

Though all expressed sorrow over the loss of four lives in the Atlantic Ocean at the beginning of July, Brunswick County town officials remained largely unified in their belief the towns do not need lifeguards.

At Oak Island, the town's nine miles of beach would cost far too much to lifeguard effectively, argues town Manager Steve Foster.

"You tell me what part of the beach you put the lifeguard on," Foster said.

Chris Brewster, president of the U.S. Lifesaving Association, dismisses that argument, saying strategic placement of lifeguards can be just as effective as erecting a lifeguard tower every quarter mile.

"One of the challenges is in areas where houses are spread" along the beach, Brewster said. "It is indeed fiscally (difficult) to justify lifeguards in that scenario, but there are ways that you deal with that."

Pender County offers a model different from Brunswick and New Hanover beach towns, with a small ocean rescue team that is trained to perform near-shore, surf rescues patrolling Topsail Beach and Surf City, said David Stancil, deputy chief of Pender Emergency Medical Services.

Two people out of the 10-member team are on duty every day to respond to ocean rescue 911 calls, roaming the road between Topsail Beach and Surf City while covering 16 miles of beach.

On the whole, Brunswick County beaches are less densely populated than those in New Hanover, with more rentals than hotels facing the ocean, similar to beaches in Pender.

Faced with miles of beach to cover, lifeguards can patrol on four-wheelers to respond to a crisis quickly and lifeguard stands can be placed at high-traffic areas, Brewster said.

Brewster called several miles of unguarded beach in a town, visited by tens of thousands annually, "irresponsible," while Foster called Brewster's assessment a "very inaccurate statement."

And even though Brewster proposed a solution to one obstacle, Foster said there are still many more obstacles.

"It's more than a single issue. It's a matter of logistics. It's a matter of distance," Foster said. "It's a matter of cost and liability."

Multiple town officials expressed concern that beachgoers could sue them if they hire lifeguards who fail to carry out a rescue.

Others said their beaches should not be lumped in with Sunset Beach, where two people drowned earlier this month, indicating there is no need for lifeguards at their vacation spots.

"We don't believe we currently need lifeguards, but to tell you the truth we haven't talked about it in awhile," said Harry Simmons, mayor of Caswell Beach and head of the Brunswick Beach Consortium. "We have found in the past is what we have available to us, providing warning, notice and guidance, works very well."

Simmons said that the Fourth of July drownings occurred at beach towns that are not as proactive with providing safety information to tourists as his town.

When it comes to saving lives, lifeguards don't put a price on their work, Baker said.

"They have a beach that they are promoting," Baker said. "They have no legal obligation (to provide lifeguards), but they have a moral obligation to protect the public since they are asking people to come there and spend their money."

A means to pay

Quantifying what it would cost to hire lifeguards at beaches of different sizes is no easy task and one that has led to estimates from town officials that trained beach lifesavers could cost up to $1 million annually.

In steps Tom Gill.

"There's got to be a reasonable effort on the part of these counties … to put lifeguards on the beach in places that are highly traveled," said Gill, president of the USLA's South Atlantic Region. "(We will) do what we can to impress the need of lifeguards on these counties."

Following the Fourth-of-July drownings, Gill was outspoken in calling for Brunswick County towns to consider hiring lifeguards in the wake of "a season's worth of drownings," as Anthony Marzano, Brunswick's director of emergency services, called the deaths on July 5.

The USLA routinely conducts studies of beaches in the wake of drownings to help municipalities decide how to protect beachgoers and what it will cost, Gill said.

"Lifesaving's not adversarial, it's a cooperative effort," Gill said.

Gill is reaching out to town officials in Brunswick County to encourage them to allow USLA certified lifeguards into their towns to study their beaches.

And the cost may not be as high as some towns, like Holden Beach, are estimating.

Holden Beach Police Chief Wally Layne estimated hiring 36 lifeguards to cover the town's nine miles of beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day would cost $1 million annually.

Carolina Beach, along with Kure and Wrightsville, fund their lifeguard services through their share of the countywide room occupancy tax.

That money is used to cover beach nourishment costs and tourism-related expenses.

Even without lifeguards, Brunswick beach towns are making an effort to improve their ocean safety education efforts.

Marty Cooke, a Brunswick County commissioner, said county EMS officials took information to beach rental companies immediately after the Fourth-of-July drownings, adding town officials will discuss hiring lifeguards at the upcoming Brunswick Beach Consortium meeting.

"They're not gonna turn a blind eye to it," Cooke said, stressing this is an issue individual towns must decide on. "I'm not advocating they do anything. I'm saying they need to look at what's in the best interests of their citizens."

Most town beach accesses in the county have signs warning swimmers of rip current dangers and some rental companies disseminate information to their renters concerning ocean safety, various town officials said.

Still, education campaigns and reactive safety crews are no substitute for a near-shore ocean rescue team, according to lifeguards from both New Hanover County and the USLA.

"The fire department and response teams (in Brunswick County) are doing the best they can ... but you've got a very, very small window to get to somebody," Sanders said. "Unless they're standing there and see (a person drowning), it's a different kind of operation."

Drowning deaths by the numbers

80: People who drowned because of rip currents in the Carolinas since 2000.

100-plus: People who die each year after being caught in from rip currents.

80: Percentage of ocean rescues caused by rip currents.

2: People who drowned in two days at unguarded Brunswick County beaches in 2013.

6: People who drowned at life-guarded beaches from Virginia to Florida in 2012.

5: People who drowned at Carolina Beach from 2008-12, with two of them blamed on rip currents.

1: Person who drowned at Kure Beach from 2008-12, blamed on a rip current.

1: Person who drowned at Wrightsville Beach from 2008-12; not blamed on a rip current.

Sources: Data provided to North Carolina Sea Grant by Steve Pfaff, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, and the U.S. Lifesaving Association

Note: Some data only available for beaches that report to the U.S. Lifesaving Association, leaving out Brunswick and Pender counties' beaches.

Taxes, tourism and beach safety

Brunswick and New Hanover counties' beach towns collect a room occupancy tax. Eighty three percent of the 6 percent tax goes to beach towns in Brunswick County while only half of the tax goes to beach towns in New Hanover County.

In New Hanover County beach towns, half of the tax goes toward marketing and half goes toward tourism-related activities.

Brunswick County receives 1 percent of the total 6 percent tax, while 3 percent of the ttax goes to New Hanover county.

Fiscal year 2012-13 room occupancy tax collections:

Brunswick County

>>Sunset Beach: $590,150

>>Ocean Isle Beach: $1,724,152.31

>>Oak Island: $1,105,570

>>Holden Beach: $1,360,210.82

>>Caswell Beach: $241,151.53

>>Bald Head Island: $938,840

New Hanover County

>>Kure Beach: $249,023, of which $147,574 funds lifeguards.^

>>Carolina Beach: $604,512, of which $350,000 funds lifeguards.^

>>Wrightsville Beach: $863,988, of which $339,000 funds lifeguards.*^

* Wrightsville Beach also pays $85,000 of its general fund annually for year-round employees

^ Collections exclude June 2013

Safer beaches

What can Brunswick County towns do to make their beaches safer?

>>Increase signage on beach walkways demonstrating how to escape and spot rip currents.

>>Post information on the dangers of rip currents (magnets, brochures) in every beach rental.

>>Fly flags on beaches to warn of dangerous rip current conditions (Green means low chance, yellow means moderate chance and red means high chance. At many beaches, lifeguards suggest not swimming if a red flag is posted, as the likelihood rip currents will form is severe.)

>>Hire lifeguards to conduct preventive education, patrol and conduct near shore water rescue. Experts encourage tourists not to swim at beaches without lifeguards.

Contrasting response strategies

The safety strategy of Brunswick County beach towns is “swim at your own risk,” as stated by multiple fire chiefs and town officials. In some towns, police officers patrol beaches. Other than those patrols, no town public safety personnel consistently guard the beaches.

New Hanover County beaches have lifeguards actively rescuing swimmers and interacting with beachgoers.

“For every rescue that's made by a lifeguard, the lifeguard tallies well over 100 preventive actions” by warning visitors of dangerous conditions and providing other information, said Chris Brewster, U.S. Lifesaving Association president.

Lifeguards at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach conducted 560 rescues in 2012. More than 60 percent were rip current related.

<p>The Sunset Beach Fire Department does not save lives in the breaking surf, nor does it attempt to. </p><p>By the time Sunset Beach Fire Chief Kevin Dempsey and his crew members reach the beach, there is no surf water rescue to conduct, as their nearest station is a mile from the beach. </p><p>True, the 25 full- and part-time firefighters who staff the department have ocean rescue training, which might suggest otherwise, but in practice their training is for boating rescues, not near-shore, rip-current-induced incidents. </p><p>"I've been here 13 years and I don't think I've been at work and actually made a surf rescue," Dempsey said. "(Victims) are usually out of the water by the time we get there." </p><p>Brunswick County beach towns were criticized for inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors to their beaches each summer without providing lifeguard protection after four drownings over the Fourth of July weekend at county beaches. </p><p>The towns of Sunset Beach, Ocean Isle Beach, Oak Island, Holden Beach, Caswell Beach and Bald Head Island operate under the swim-at-your-own-risk policy, while New Hanover County beach towns employ lifeguards.</p><p>Although the recent drowning deaths started a conversation about Brunswick County municipalities hiring lifeguards, no town had stepped forward as of this week. </p><p>David Hewett, the town manager of Holden Beach, which contracts with Tri Beach Volunteer Fire Department for fire coverage, summed up the ocean rescue abilities of the department, one that is nearly identical to other fire departments with speedboats and open water training. </p><p>"Ocean rescue as delivered by Tri Beach Fire is not a viable life saving service ... in the context of providing near-shore life saving services," Hewett said. "It's a round peg in a square hole."</p><h3>Guarding for life</h3>
<p>To understand why Brunswick County beaches do not have lifeguards, one can look across the <a href="http://www.starnewsonline.com/section/topic91"><b>Cape Fear River</b></a> to New Hanover County. </p><p>Lifeguards have patrolled Kure Beach since the 1950s, Carolina Beach since the '40s and Wrightsville Beach since the '30s, according to the beach towns' respective ocean rescue captains. </p><p>"I believe it started in the early '50s, late '40s," Edmund Kennedy, captain of Kure Beach Ocean Rescue, said of the town's lifeguard service. "They had two lifeguards and, from what I understand, one of them was paid by the pier and the other one was paid by the town or the hotel owners."</p><p>Today, Kure Beach has 30 lifeguards who patrol the town's three and a half miles of beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day using four-wheelers and nine guard towers, Kennedy said. </p><p>"We take a proactive approach to the citizens and the community of Wrightsville beach," said Dave Baker, captain of the Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue. Baker said Brunswick County beach towns take a reactive approach to beach safety.</p><p>Steve Foster, manager of Oak Island, and Helen Cashwell, former mayor of Oak Island, both said the former Long Beach section of the island had a few lifeguards in the 1980s, but they do not remember when or why the lifeguards stopped working. </p><p>Long Beach and Yaupon Beach combined in 1999 to form Oak Island, which remains North Carolina's most-populated beach town with 6,874 permanent residents. </p><p>The swim-at-your-own-risk policy followed by Brunswick County beach towns is not one that Carolina Beach Ocean Rescue Captain Simon Sanders identifies with. </p><p>Carolina Beach Ocean Rescue isn't a cheap program to run, Sanders said.</p><p>"It's bigger than our police and fire departments," he said.</p><p>Sanders is in charge of 45 seasonal full- and part-time employees, responsible for Carolina Beach's four and a half miles of beach and protecting 800,000-plus annual tourists. </p><p>"The lifeguards come in and think it's a summer job. I just tell them you don't know it but you're going to make a difference to somebody," Sanders said. "They're going to save somebody that wouldn't normally have been there without them."</p><h3>The cost of lifeguarding</h3>
<p>Though all expressed sorrow over the loss of four lives in the Atlantic Ocean at the beginning of July, Brunswick County town officials remained largely unified in their belief the towns do not need lifeguards. </p><p>At Oak Island, the town's nine miles of beach would cost far too much to lifeguard effectively, argues town Manager Steve Foster. </p><p>"You tell me what part of the beach you put the lifeguard on," Foster said. </p><p>Chris Brewster, president of the U.S. Lifesaving Association, dismisses that argument, saying strategic placement of lifeguards can be just as effective as erecting a lifeguard tower every quarter mile. </p><p>"One of the challenges is in areas where houses are spread" along the beach, Brewster said. "It is indeed fiscally (difficult) to justify lifeguards in that scenario, but there are ways that you deal with that."</p><p>Pender County offers a model different from Brunswick and New Hanover beach towns, with a small ocean rescue team that is trained to perform near-shore, surf rescues patrolling Topsail Beach and Surf City, said David Stancil, deputy chief of Pender Emergency Medical Services. </p><p>"They're lifeguard trained (but) we don't call them lifeguards," Stancil said. </p><p>Two people out of the 10-member team are on duty every day to respond to ocean rescue 911 calls, roaming the road between Topsail Beach and Surf City while covering 16 miles of beach. </p><p>On the whole, Brunswick County beaches are less densely populated than those in New Hanover, with more rentals than hotels facing the ocean, similar to beaches in Pender. </p><p>Faced with miles of beach to cover, lifeguards can patrol on four-wheelers to respond to a crisis quickly and lifeguard stands can be placed at high-traffic areas, Brewster said. </p><p>Brewster called several miles of unguarded beach in a town, visited by tens of thousands annually, "irresponsible," while Foster called Brewster's assessment a "very inaccurate statement." </p><p>And even though Brewster proposed a solution to one obstacle, Foster said there are still many more obstacles.</p><p>"It's more than a single issue. It's a matter of logistics. It's a matter of distance," Foster said. "It's a matter of cost and liability."</p><p>Multiple town officials expressed concern that beachgoers could sue them if they hire lifeguards who fail to carry out a rescue. </p><p>Others said their beaches should not be lumped in with Sunset Beach, where two people drowned earlier this month, indicating there is no need for lifeguards at their vacation spots. </p><p>"We don't believe we currently need lifeguards, but to tell you the truth we haven't talked about it in awhile," said Harry Simmons, mayor of Caswell Beach and head of the Brunswick Beach Consortium. "We have found in the past is what we have available to us, providing warning, notice and guidance, works very well."</p><p>Simmons said that the Fourth of July drownings occurred at beach towns that are not as proactive with providing safety information to tourists as his town. </p><p>When it comes to saving lives, lifeguards don't put a price on their work, Baker said. </p><p>"They have a beach that they are promoting," Baker said. "They have no legal obligation (to provide lifeguards), but they have a moral obligation to protect the public since they are asking people to come there and spend their money."</p><h3>A means to pay</h3>
<p>Quantifying what it would cost to hire lifeguards at beaches of different sizes is no easy task and one that has led to estimates from town officials that trained beach lifesavers could cost up to $1 million annually. </p><p>In steps Tom Gill. </p><p>"There's got to be a reasonable effort on the part of these counties … to put lifeguards on the beach in places that are highly traveled," said Gill, president of the USLA's South Atlantic Region. "(We will) do what we can to impress the need of lifeguards on these counties." </p><p>Following the Fourth-of-July drownings, Gill was outspoken in calling for Brunswick County towns to consider hiring lifeguards in the wake of "a season's worth of drownings," as Anthony Marzano, Brunswick's director of emergency services, called the deaths on July 5. </p><p>The USLA routinely conducts studies of beaches in the wake of drownings to help municipalities decide how to protect beachgoers and what it will cost, Gill said. </p><p>"Lifesaving's not adversarial, it's a cooperative effort," Gill said. </p><p>Gill is reaching out to town officials in Brunswick County to encourage them to allow USLA certified lifeguards into their towns to study their beaches. </p><p>And the cost may not be as high as some towns, like Holden Beach, are estimating. </p><p>Holden Beach Police Chief Wally Layne estimated hiring 36 lifeguards to cover the town's nine miles of beach from Memorial Day to Labor Day would cost $1 million annually. </p><p>Carolina Beach, paying starting lifeguards $9.50 an hour, spends $260,000 on 37 full-time lifeguards who work 40 hours a week, as well as eight part-time lifeguards and higher pay for more senior ocean rescue personnel, Sanders said. </p><p>Carolina Beach, along with Kure and Wrightsville, fund their lifeguard services through their share of the countywide room occupancy tax. </p><p>That money is used to cover beach nourishment costs and tourism-related expenses. </p><p>Even without lifeguards, Brunswick beach towns are making an effort to improve their ocean safety education efforts. </p><p>Marty Cooke, a Brunswick County commissioner, said county EMS officials took information to beach rental companies immediately after the Fourth-of-July drownings, adding town officials will discuss hiring lifeguards at the upcoming Brunswick Beach Consortium meeting. </p><p>"They're not gonna turn a blind eye to it," Cooke said, stressing this is an issue individual towns must decide on. "I'm not advocating they do anything. I'm saying they need to look at what's in the best interests of their citizens." </p><p>Most town beach accesses in the county have signs warning swimmers of rip current dangers and some rental companies disseminate information to their renters concerning ocean safety, various town officials said.</p><p>Still, education campaigns and reactive safety crews are no substitute for a near-shore ocean rescue team, according to lifeguards from both New Hanover County and the USLA. </p><p>"The fire department and response teams (in Brunswick County) are doing the best they can ... but you've got a very, very small window to get to somebody," Sanders said. "Unless they're standing there and see (a person drowning), it's a different kind of operation." </p><p>Will Drabold: 343-2016</p><p>On <a href="http://www.starnewsonline.com/section/news41"><b>Twitter</b></a>: @willdrabold</p><h3>Drowning deaths by the numbers</h3>
<p><b>80: </b>People who drowned because of rip currents in the Carolinas since 2000. </p><p><b>100-plus: </b>People who die each year after being caught in from rip currents.</p><p><b>80: </b>Percentage of ocean rescues caused by rip currents.</p><p><b>2: </b>People who drowned in two days at unguarded Brunswick County beaches in 2013. </p><p><b>6:</b> People who drowned at life-guarded beaches from Virginia to Florida in 2012.</p><p><b>5: </b>People who drowned at Carolina Beach from 2008-12, with two of them blamed on rip currents.</p><p><b>1: </b>Person who drowned at Kure Beach from 2008-12, blamed on a rip current.</p><p><b>1:</b> Person who drowned at Wrightsville Beach from 2008-12; not blamed on a rip current.</p><p><b>Sources: Data provided to North Carolina Sea Grant by Steve Pfaff, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, and the U.S. Lifesaving Association </p><p><b>Note: Some data only available for beaches that report to the U.S. Lifesaving Association, leaving out Brunswick and Pender counties' beaches.</p><p><b>Taxes, tourism and beach safety</b></p><p>Brunswick and New Hanover counties' beach towns collect a room occupancy tax. Eighty three percent of the 6 percent tax goes to beach towns in Brunswick County while only half of the tax goes to beach towns in New Hanover County. </p><p>In Brunswick County towns, 60 percent of the tax goes toward tourism-related activities, while 40 percent goes toward beach nourishment. </p><p>In New Hanover County beach towns, half of the tax goes toward marketing and half goes toward tourism-related activities.</p><p>Brunswick County receives 1 percent of the total 6 percent tax, while 3 percent of the ttax goes to New Hanover county. </p><p>Fiscal year 2012-13 room occupancy tax collections:</p><p><b>Brunswick County</b></p><p><b>>>Sunset Beach:</b> $590,150</p><p><b>>>Ocean Isle Beach:</b> $1,724,152.31</p><p><b>>>Oak Island:</b> $1,105,570</p><p><b>>>Holden Beach:</b> $1,360,210.82</p><p><b>>>Caswell Beach:</b> $241,151.53</p><p><b>>>Bald Head Island:</b> $938,840</p><p><b>New Hanover County</b></p><p><b>>>Kure Beach:</b> $249,023, of which $147,574 funds lifeguards.^ </p><p><b>>>Carolina Beach: </b>$604,512, of which $350,000 funds lifeguards.^ </p><p><b>>>Wrightsville Beach:</b> $863,988, of which $339,000 funds lifeguards.*^</p><p>* Wrightsville Beach also pays $85,000 of its general fund annually for year-round employees</p><p>^ Collections exclude June 2013</p><p><b>Safer beaches</b></p><p>What can Brunswick County towns do to make their beaches safer? </p><p><b>>></b>Increase signage on beach walkways demonstrating how to escape and spot rip currents.</p><p><b>>></b>Post information on the dangers of rip currents (magnets, brochures) in every beach rental.</p><p><b>>></b>Fly flags on beaches to warn of dangerous rip current conditions (Green means low chance, yellow means moderate chance and red means high chance. At many beaches, lifeguards suggest not swimming if a red flag is posted, as the likelihood rip currents will form is severe.)</p><p><b>>></b>Hire lifeguards to conduct preventive education, patrol and conduct near shore water rescue. Experts encourage tourists not to swim at beaches without lifeguards. </p><p><b>Contrasting response strategies</b></p><p>The safety strategy of Brunswick County beach towns is “swim at your own risk,” as stated by multiple fire chiefs and town officials. In some towns, police officers patrol beaches. Other than those patrols, no town public safety personnel consistently guard the beaches. </p><p>New Hanover County beaches have lifeguards actively rescuing swimmers and interacting with beachgoers.</p><p>“For every rescue that's made by a lifeguard, the lifeguard tallies well over 100 preventive actions” by warning visitors of dangerous conditions and providing other information, said Chris Brewster, U.S. Lifesaving Association president.</p><p>Lifeguards at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach and Kure Beach conducted 560 rescues in 2012. More than 60 percent were rip current related.</p>